


carry me home on your shoulders

by superultra



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, Spider-Man - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Angst, F/M, For no reason really, happy ending though dont worry everything is fine i swear, peter and mj are both big dumb dramatic babies, really no plot just peter observing michelle waste away pretty much, stupid idiots
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-02-03
Updated: 2019-02-03
Packaged: 2019-10-21 09:01:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,159
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17639774
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/superultra/pseuds/superultra
Summary: She has stopped wearing shirts with charming feminist phrases and color-coding her decathlon flashcards and doodling on the edges of her calculus notes. She has stopped drawing people in crisis - has actually stopped carrying her sketchbook with her altogether, her skin suspiciously clear of its usual charcoal smudges and ink stains.But mostly, she has stopped looking at him.(or the one where MJ's fading away and it's Peter's turn to stare)





	carry me home on your shoulders

**Author's Note:**

> hello hello welcome to this 3000-word shitstorm of unnecessary angst hope u enjoy xoxo gossip girl 
> 
> title is from Mexico by The Staves which is a god-tier soft song go listen and tell me u dont want to lie in the ocean and float away from everything

Something is different.

MJ has always carried herself with a chilled neutrality, eyes lidded in disinterest, mouth curled in one of two signature expressions: bemused or annoyed. She is all serrated edges and shadowed features, gracefully slender in a way that has always been more intimidating than it has ever been attractive, and yet.

And yet.

There is a certain blankness that wasn’t there before. Peter hadn’t noticed it at first; he supposes it was gradual, miniscule. She has stopped wearing shirts with charming feminist phrases and color-coding her decathlon flashcards and doodling on the edges of her calculus notes. She has stopped drawing people in crisis - has actually stopped carrying her sketchbook with her altogether, her skin suspiciously clear of its usual charcoal smudges and ink stains.

But mostly, she has stopped looking at him.

No, that’s not true - not entirely, he concedes in his head. Not enough for it to be suspicious, or strange. She’ll look at him during practice when he rings his buzzer to answer her, or when he asks a question about their chemistry homework, or when he tries to include her in the conversation he’s having with Ned about Star Wars over lunch. She makes the appropriate amount of eye contact, always looking away when it’s time, eyes never lingering. And it bothers him.

Because, look, he’s not completely oblivious, all right? He knows she used to stare at him, knows she liked to sit at their lunch table and sketch him talking to Ned with his mouth full of bodega sandwich. He always figured she was trying to pin him down, understand him, see through his skin in that sneaky, obtrusive MJ way of hers. He grew accustomed to it, familiar with it - expectant of it, even. It became something he could count on; if MJ was nearby, she was studying him.

Until she wasn’t anymore.

And Peter’s not self-obsessed, he’s not going to approach her and ask _hey how are you doing by the way why don’t you look at me anymore_ because that would be, well, weird. And indiscreet. And overly confrontational, especially coming from a boy who can’t answer a question in class without stuttering at least three times.

So it’s his turn to stare, he supposes.

 

 

Looking at MJ, he finds, hurts him. Looking at MJ is like watching a cigarette burn out, the flames licking themselves asleep, ashes scattering softly as she gradually shrinks and shrinks and shrinks until there is nothing left but a filter of cellulose acetate. Which is ironic, on the surface level; with the scathing comebacks she bites out, you’d think she’d be made up of anything _but_ a filter, her brain a seemingly direct funnel to her mouth. But Peter knows she is careful with her words - calculative, deliberate, invulnerable. She reveals nothing she doesn’t intend to, nothing that could hurt her, nothing that would invite speculation.

The thing is, Peter still finds himself speculating anyway. He’s curious by nature, becoming even more so because with all of his observing he has realized that she’s actually terribly beautiful in an aching kind of way, tempting and frustrating in her secrecy. He wants to ask her what’s going on in that big Harvard-bound brain of hers. He wants to tell her that it’s okay to share things; that he knows she has worries and fears and doubts and insecurities, that everyone does, that she’s more transparent than she thinks she is and she doesn’t have to let it eat her up. But he figures that’d be too much, that it’s not his place - and he knows she wouldn’t take it well. He knows she’d sneer and raise one eyebrow and sink her teeth into his weak spots, rattling them around until he caved, until he left her alone to her guarded opacity. She’s not quite cruel, but there is something sharp in her eyes, something his senses pick up on, raising the hairs on his arms, whispering _danger danger danger_ whenever he gets too close.

And so he just watches.

 

 

As it turns out, watching someone constantly is a precursor to also thinking about them constantly, so. That happens. She invades his headspace more and more and more, his brain a mess of her lower lip and the curve of her back and the flyaway curls that she huffs out of her face, but also the change in her demeanor. He wonders what’s happening to her - why she’s crumbling in on herself, why she’s fading out, why she sits three seats away from them at lunch now and leaves decathlon practice without saying goodbye. He also wonders if he has any right to wonder all of this. It’s becoming so distracting he almost smacks into the sides of the buildings he swings between on his nightly patrols several times, too ensnared in thoughts of MJ.

It’s one of these nights that he sees her - almost misses her, in fact, her figure tucked quietly in a darkened alleyway. His eyebrows furrow beneath the mask, considering dropping down to ask her if she needs help getting home before he registers another figure against her, hand folded around her hip. His heart climbs to the top of his throat so quickly he’s surprised it doesn’t spill out over the sidewalk beneath him, and oh.

Oh.

They’re kissing now - rather roughly, it seems - and his suit picks up on the slick, sloppy sounds between them. The guy is taller than her, pinned against the bricks by her lithe form, clearly enjoying himself. It’s harder to tell if MJ is similarly pleased, but Peter figures she is, right? Why else would she be kissing him?

There is an ugly feeling in his gut as he continues to watch, a poison coiling through his insides like ivy, tightening around his chest. A voice sneaks into his head to chant _look she’s moved on how does it feel you’re too late_ but he squashes that down because he doesn’t know what it’s supposed to mean (or maybe he does, but he definitely doesn’t know how to deal with it). He’s got about an hour left of patrolling to complete, but he suddenly doesn’t think he could stomach anymore tonight. He leaves them silently, mind whirring and stomach clenched.

When he gets home he lies in bed without stripping his suit off, staring at the black metal rods of his top bunk. He can still hear the sounds of their mouths when the sun washes in through his blinds.

 

 

(If he keeps an eye out for her when he makes his rounds around the city now, he’ll pretend it’s out of curiosity. A scientific inquiry, if you will.

And if he sees her against the same brick wall on four more occasions, each time with a different boy, always pulling back with that same empty expression on her face, drained of energy, searching for something to heal her, well.

He’ll pretend he doesn’t lose any sleep over it.)

 

 

He’s been looking too long at the bruises smudged against the skin of her neck, head foggy and stomach twisting wretchedly from the implications, from what he has discovered. They look wrong, unkind. Taunting.

“Green’s not a good color on you,” she offers plainly, eyes painfully blank.

He wants to bite back _and purple’s not your shade, either_ but that wouldn’t be him; that would be crossing this line they have drawn. He won’t let his bitterness spill out - his worry, his anger, his fear. He wants to tell her that he knows what she does in the dark - that he doesn’t like it, that it hurts him for some reason, that he thinks it’s hurting her, too -  but it’s none of his business, really. She’s made sure it’s not anyone’s.

 _Let me be scared for you_ , he wants to say. _Let someone be goddamn terrified._

Instead he just shrugs, lips pulled up in a thin smile that doesn’t reach his eyes in the slightest. Her gaze is not imploring or intense, and it doesn’t burn like it used to, like it should. His throat feels tight and itchy just meeting it, constricting in the way it does before he cries. He thinks he might.

She turns her head away in that swift way she does, movements always abrupt, peculiarly graceful in their violence. He watches her snake a hand up to rest against her neck, covering the marks as she goes back to scanning the pages of her book. He can tell she’s not reading by the rigid square of her shoulders, the way her lips aren’t worried absentmindedly between her teeth.

 _Let me in,_ his mind murmurs.

He knows she won’t.

 

 

“Who introduced the theory of impetus?”

His hand slaps against the buzzer before he even registers the question, needing to see her eyes flit to his, uncaring that he’s going to look like a dipshit when he doesn’t respond right away. She raises an eyebrow coolly, meeting his gaze with no intensity, no ulterior feeling. She waits for him to speak.

“John Philoponus,” he stutters out eventually, once his brain has caught up to the question. He keeps his eyes on her as he does, tracing the sharp cut of her jaw, the freckle on her neck, the crescents of violet under her eyes.

She doesn’t say anything, just nods slightly, sharply, moving on to the next question. Ned is looking at him strangely, he can feel it, but he can’t care about that right now. Not when MJ looks so fucking drained, so devoid of anything. She is withering away and no one is doing a thing about it; no one’s trying to ignite something back into her.

He hears the questions shift from physics to chemistry to history and so on, but he’s given up trying to focus on anything but the painful monotone of MJ’s voice, the hollow cavities of her eyes. He can’t keep pretending he hasn’t noticed.

 

 

“Can we talk?”

The question hangs in the air for a touch too long to be nonchalant. He had ran out of the practice room as soon as she declared they were done for the day, leaning against the wall outside the door so he could grab her attention on her way out. She eyes him - not invasively, not in the way she would have before, with acid on the tip of her tongue and brain running a mile a minute to be ahead, to figure out the hidden implications. Just eyes him. _Dully_ , his brain supplies, and he tries not to let that sting so much.

“Okay,” she replies, voice toneless. He was hoping for snark, for something like _we already are talking, dumbass,_ but he supposes this is as much as he’s going to get.

“What’s…” he stumbles through his question, voice soft and trembling, prodding, “what’s going on with you?”

He watches her blink, swallowing around the dryness of her throat. He doesn’t realize that the question catches her off guard until his eyes catch the slightest of quivering in her hands, almost imperceptible as she steadies them against her thighs.

“What kind of a question is that, Parker?” The words are defensive, but the tone is honest, and tired, and laced with a hint of confusion. Her voice is rusted with apprehension, a raspy kind of lilt that shouldn’t be sexy but makes his cheeks flush pink anyway.

 _A kind you should answer,_ he thinks. _A kind that’s important._

He stays silent, leveling her with a look that he hopes is more earnest than it is exhausted; he’s going for slightly casual here, even if it’s not working out so well. She cracks slightly.

“Nothing’s going on,” she tries, eyes trained against a spot on his right cheekbone. He doesn’t react, silently encouraging her for more, for something he can work with, for anything that she’s willing to give.

“Nothing’s going on with me,” she starts up again, voice strangely tight, “I’m just afraid.”

His hands curl against his sides, a red clouding his vision at her admission. It’s the answer some part of him anticipated, and he knows she doesn’t need a protector, knows he’s probably overreacting, but, well - is he, though? She is visibly flaking away, rubbing herself to dust, and no one has seemed to catch on even though it feels so obvious now. He doesn’t want her to be afraid. The words are on the tip of his tongue - _I know you are where have you gone why won’t you let me in -_ but before he can part his lips to reply, her voice cuts in once more.

“I’m afraid you’re going to break my heart.”

And that’s.

Not what he was expecting.

Peter feels his breath hitch, and suddenly he’s scared he’s misheard her but also begging some higher power that he has. He knows he’s panicking - his senses on overdrive, his heart stammering, his palms sweating - but god, he doesn’t want it to happen like this. He didn’t think it would happen at _all_ , but in his daydreams it was sweeter and brighter and not nearly as devastating and this is all so terribly, terribly wrong. He doesn’t open his mouth to respond - doesn’t know what he could say that wouldn’t sound frantic, defensive, crazy, _why would I do that how would I do that what is that even supposed to mean -_ and she takes his silence like a sword to the chest, a small humorless laugh bubbling out like a scratch.

“I’m afraid you already have,” she amends quietly, but it’s so loud to him. It’s all he can hear. It’s thrumming through his ears like a hymn, pounding against his skull: _you already have you already have you already have._

It doesn’t feel like he’s crying, necessarily, but he knows his eyes aren’t dry. He knows he sounds like a child when he gulps around his response, voice cracking, “That’s not fair.”

And it’s not. And she knows that; she _has_ to know that, right? She hasn’t _given_ him her heart to break - has kept it locked beyond iron doors and steel gates and a fucking _moat_ , for Christ’s sake, has never laid it out in the open for him to cup in the palms of his hands like he’s laid in bed praying about. This moment should have been a commencement and it’s not fucking _fair_ that she’s rolled it around in her brain and decided it’s an ending instead - decided their story was over before it even began, before he ever got the chance to catch up.

He cuts in again, before she can spew some bullshit about _all’s fair in love and war_ or whatever, because this isn’t a war, he doesn’t want to be her villain, _why doesn't she get that why did it take me so long,_ “I’m not going to hurt you, Em.”

It’s too gentle, he realizes, too saccharine for her to take to heart. He watches her tense up - eyes guarded, lips beginning to sneer coldly, offensively. He can hear her thoughts echo _you will you will you already have_ and his jaw tightens.

“I’m not your enemy,” he starts, firmer this time. There’s a fire in his voice now and he hopes it’s burning her, hopes she’ll listen through the singe. He tastes salt as he licks his lips, “And it’s not fair that you’ve decided I am. I’m not going to hurt you. I haven’t...I haven’t _done_ anything, Em.”

She’s meeting his eyes now, gaze intense, prickling at the nickname. It’s the most emotion she’s conveyed in front of him in a long time and it makes him shiver, but he holds it. Basks in it.

“Exactly,” she chews out after a pregnant moment, the word heavy and matter-of-fact. He tries to understand what she means by it, eyebrows furrowed slightly.

“You haven’t done anything,” she agrees with him, voice slow and sticky as she repeats herself, “Exactly.”

He digests that, considers the meaning in his head, lets it sink in with a fizzling caution. If he’s reading that right, he thinks slowly, then this is uncharted territory.

He sees a bridge lower down between them, unsteady and missing planks of wood but there nonetheless, hovering above her moat, swaying gently. He takes a cautious step, testing to see if it’s sturdy enough to support him.

“Do you...do you _want_ me to do something?”

She hasn’t taken her eyes off of him, and he’s pretty sure she hasn’t breathed, either - her facial features carefully frozen. There is a light blush dusting her cheeks, barely noticeable against her skin. She is embarrassed by her vulnerability, he can tell. Betrayed by her honesty, by her moment unguarded, by something else. He thinks he knows her answer, suddenly - feels stupid for taking so long to understand - and waits for a confirmation that this is what he thinks it could be, what he’s hoping it is, what he’s been waiting for since she stopped looking at him and he started looking at her and maybe before that, even.

“Of course I do,” she breathes out finally, voice light and haunting, staining the air around them. He hears the words dance around, hears them chant: _of course of course of course_. Like it was somehow obvious. Like he should’ve known. And god, maybe he should’ve, “I always have, Peter.”

The bridge is still unsteady, he knows. There’s a possibility - no, a likelihood - that he’s going to slip and fall between the pauses in its boards, that he’ll land faceforward with a heavy crash into the water beneath, pulled down to his death, body chewed up and spit out by the alligators she has swimming around in its depths to keep her cozy and lonely in her castle, to protect her from these villains she has grown afraid of. 

He doesn’t even look as he crosses it.

Her lips are still partly open from her soft confession when he surges forward with his own, connecting them in a haste, in a desperation to be against her. If she’s surprised, she doesn’t make it known; she kisses back furiously, hungrily, matching his energy with heated fervor.

She tastes like the fire he’s missed in her eyes.

“Why,” he pants between the marriage of their lips, “why did you stop looking at me?” And it’s maybe not the most pressing question; maybe it’s not even something she’ll get, but he has to ask it anyway - has to let it tumble out of him because it’s been sitting there for so long.

She pulls back, eyes unclouding and narrowing with accusation, and it sucks a breath out of him because good _god_ he’s missed that. His body floods with relief at her quiet fury, at the blank space in her eyes filling up with heat again. He feels like he could cry before he realizes that he already has.

“You weren’t looking back.”

**Author's Note:**

> ps sorry if they are out-of-character and uber-dramatic i wanted to explore the idea of mj kind of giving up and closing in on herself and trying to move on from her infatuation w/ peter and peter finally realizing Hey I Think I Like Her What's Happening 
> 
> thank u for reading if u made it to the end!! sorry about the angst!!!!


End file.
